Fromper's new 2008 improvement thread

[Fromper]

I was joking when I said that anything without center pawns traded in the first two moves is a quiet, positional opening. Compared to what I play, it is, but I do know better.

When it comes to the Dutch, I just don't know enough about it. To me, it seems like the English - an unbalanced position, but I've never heard of it being an opening that produces lots of attacking miniatures. Maybe that's just because I haven't heard much about it at all. But it does seem like something completely new and different that would require lots of study time, which I'm trying to avoid.

As for my backup openings, part of it is that I don't want people at my local club intentionally booking up on the refutations of my unsound gambits and clobbering me. I beat one of the best players in the club last month in a lucky blitz game with the Englund. I just know he went home and looked up how to play against it. I'll keep playing it against him in blitz, but if I play him in a slow game, I'd rather surprise him with something new next time and have a chance of gaining an advantage by catching him off guard, rather than playing into a memorized refutation of my unsound gambit. And he's not the only one at that club that I may have to worry about that way eventually.

More importantly, most of the advice I keep seeing says that to improve, you should stick to main line openings. I guess the idea is that you want to get used to those openings as early as possible. That way, you don't have to start from scratch learning them once you reach a level where your opponents won't let you get away with the unsound stuff.

The other thing is that I'm just not doing that well with the openings I'm currently playing. I do great with the Englund, and I do pretty well in lines as white where my opponents avoid the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, but I still haven't won a tournament game with the BDG itself. I think I'm at 3 losses and a draw when I actually get to play the gambit itself. I've scored a few wins with it in internet games, so I think I'm starting to get the hang of it, but it's not an easy opening to play. You really have to know what you're doing. As mentioned earlier, if you can't force an attack early, you're just down a pawn for nothing. If I switch to the Colle, it won't require much opening study to get me up to speed and able to play it, so it's worth considering.

As for the French against e4, there are some lines that I know so much better than my opponents that I always get out of the opening with an advantage, sometimes even an extra pawn or two, but then I'm usually in a middle game that's relatively quiet and doesn't lend itself to attacking. I'm not really good enough to know how to play those positions well, so I sometimes end up losing, even if I was up in material by a pawn or two. And that's the lines that I'm good at - I seem to have no luck at all in the Exchange variation.

So if I switch to e5 against e4, there are some lines that I'm already relatively comfortable with, like the black side of the Ruy Lopez and Scotch. But there are others that I really don't know much about, so my opponents can mess me up. I've scored some pretty pathetic losses in recent months on the black side of the Center Game, Ponziani, and King's Gambit, for instance. I don't mind if it's a middle game struggle, but the losses I'm talking about were mostly caused by lousy opening play that took away any chance I had of getting some counterplay going in the middle game. And frankly, I never know what to do in the quiet lines of the Giuoco Piano. If white doesn't play 4. c3, things get really boring, and I tend to over-reach while trying to prevent the boring positions and lose because of it.

My loss today trying the Sicilian reminded me of why I've never tried it before - it requires too much study to even start playing it. I guess with e5, I know some of the lines of some of the openings that could be thrown at me.

So for now, I'm sticking with the BDG, Englund, and French in tournaments. But in practice games, I want to play the Colle a few times and e5 against e4. Once I feel more comfortable with those openings, I'll start playing them in tournaments, too. And maybe I'll try the Albin or Baltic once in a while, too, but I'm not in quite as much of a rush for those.

--Fromper

[bjphillips]

Hi Fromper,

I won't say much about the Dutch other than to point out that it was part of Tal's repetoire from time to time. If you can find the game between Gluecksberg and Najdorf from 1935 you'll see some of the potential fireworks black can launch (Najdorf won in 22 moves).

I don't know what advice you've read about playing mainline openings but I'd be surprised if the advice was given because you need to get "used" to them. Consider a couple of things. In general mainline openings are mainline because the scheme of maneuver best follows classical principles unless you are playing something hypermodern/modern. That makes them easier to understand and play relatively well just following classical principles. Furthermore the consequences of a slight error are likely to be less. Lots of well annotated GM games are available.

If you play non-mainline stuff you run into a number of problems. The lines tend to be based on a particular idea which is not necessarily obvious. Often there is a lack of annotated games so you are really left to your own devices to figure out the nuances of the line. To further complicate matters the correct moves for the line may be counter-intuitive or contrary to classical principles which makes it pretty difficult to sort out at the board - especially for a Class player.

For the improving player this means a number of things. Either you have to spend a disproportionate time on openings or you risk playing a system that you don't really understand. To make matters worse, when faced with a new move/position at the board classical principles may be less applicable in that specific nuanced variation. In many ways this can quickly turn into a heavy time investment with little returns. You are right, to play the BDG successfully is a significant time investment. You can't fake it at the board on general principles because your opening has placed you in a crisis from the get go. You have to devote the energy to learning the opening before hand and I think that energy is better spent on other aspects of the game.

Brian

[lanced]

I don't understand fromter, aren't you a quiet positional player? If that is the case than you should feel fine in a quiet line of the quiet game. I know that you are forcing yourself to learn to attack but you can't attack the king every game. Are you refusing to play positionally? I am trying hard to develop my positional skills by playing opeinings like the catalan but if I get in a situation where I feel like I should go for his king I do. Maybe for learnings sake it is right to work on your weeknesses all the time but from 'sound' viewpoint sometimes there is no room for hyperaggressive play.

[Fromper]

I'm not really a positional player yet. I used to be a defensive player who would just play quiet openings and sit around in the middle game waiting for my opponents to attack me, because I didn't know what else to do. Now I'm learning to attack, so I'm focusing on openings that allow me to do so. But if there's no attack or tactical counterplay in a middle game position, I'm still pretty much stuck sitting around wondering what to do.

I've got some knowledge of positional basics, but this is why I eventually need to finish reading Silman's books. Right now, that's not my top priority, though. I'm still mostly focused on tactics and endgames, with a little bit of opening study when I want to look up a particular line. The Amateur's Mind and Reassess Your Chess will probably be my next major study project when I'm done with the current endgame study project.

I've learned that I'm not that good at multi-tasking in my study. I always have tactical puzzles to do, my own games to study after playing them, and opening lines to research as they come up. Besides that, I don't want to have more than one other thing to do in my study, and right now, that one other thing is serious endgame study.

Speaking of which, the endgame study really is starting to pay off. I think I already mentioned my game from the tournament last weekend where I was in a losing position, but I managed to win because I remembered the rule "A rook can't stop connected pawns on the 6th rank", so that led me to sac an exchange and leave myself down a rook for a pawn (instead of a knight for a pawn) with a won game. Also, in a blitz game this week, I ended up in an endgame where I had a lone rook against my opponent's rook, bishop, and 2 pawns. Even with less than 2 minutes to go, I realized that if I could grab the right pawn while trading rooks, he wouldn't be able to queen his rook pawn, because the queening square was the wrong color for his bishop. So I pulled out a draw after a lousy blitz game where I just hung a piece and should have lost. I think I'm getting to the point of being better at endgames than any other aspect of the game.

--Fromper

[Fromper]

Ok, so since starting this thread about a week ago, there's been a whole lot of discussion about my opening repertoire and not much else. So here's what I've actually done in that week.

1. Lots of tactics puzzles. I haven't really been organized about this. I've done some online during breaks at work. I've done some from books that I don't know very well. And before playing a tournament game yesterday, I warmed up by doing a bunch from books that I already know like the back of my hand. I'm ok with random, as long as I'm doing a lot of tactics puzzles and heading in the right direction. Sometimes, quantity of study is more important than quality, as long as it's not large quantities of complete garbage, which this isn't.

2. Some endgame study, but not a huge amount. I need to focus on that a little more, which probably means taking away from the tactical puzzle time. Actually, I've been doing better in the endgames when my games get that far, so I've probably focused on it enough to learn a lot already. But rather than backing off since it's no longer my biggest weakness, I want to finish REALLY learning everything in Pandolfini's Endgame Course. Then I'll probably be able to take a very long break from endgame study while I focus on bigger weaknesses.

3. A few blitz games online. I've only played a few, and I'm not doing so well in these games, because I blunder badly in the middle games. But it's good for practicing openings that I'm trying to get used to, and also for getting used to playing endgames in time trouble. As I said earlier, I managed to draw a bad position with good endgame play in one of these games, so that was good practice.

4. Yesterday, we started a new weekly tournament at the local club. We lost our location, so we're playing at the TD's house while he's negotiating with a local university to move the club there. It's one game per week at G/120. Since it's a Swiss, and I'm slightly below the middle of the pack in rating, I had to play the second highest rated guy there (1800) the first round. I actually don't know this guy, as I've never seen him at this club before. I tried for the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, and we transposed to a Pirc after 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nc3 g6 3. e4 d6, which happens to me a lot. I missed a thematic Pirc move in the opening and got a bad position. Then in the middle game, I tried an attacking sacrifice that was just a bad idea. Obviously, I lost, but I don't mind so much when I lose to such high rated opponents, especially when the game is this educational. It taught me a little more about the Pirc, and it also helped me analyze my own attacking methods. All this gambit play has helped me overcome my shyness about attacking, but now I'm taking it too far in the other direction and trying too hard to force attacks even when there's nothing there. Now that I'm more aware of this problem, I can concentrate more in my games on trying to balance attacking and restraint, depending on what's called for in the position. This is a good step for me.

5. Opening study. Thinking about which opening in my repertoire I most need to change right away, I decided it's the BDG. So I spent some time yesterday after the tourney game reading the chapter on the Colle System in the book "Action Chess: Purdy's 24 Hours Opening Repertoire", which is a collection of articles by CJS Purdy on openings that he thought are good to play for people who don't want to spend much time on opening study. It didn't take long to read, and I'm ready to dive in and try this opening. So afterwards, I tried a blitz game online in the Colle. My opponent played Bf5 before I could play Bd3, so per Purdy's recommendation, I abandoned the Colle and played c4, transposing to a QGD. It went ok until I blundered tactically in the middle game. I always do that in blitz. Then I won when my opponent blundered back and let me have a good endgame, which he resigned rather than playing out. That surprised me since it was still a tough endgame.

Overall, I think I'm making decent progress. I'm getting pretty good at endgames, I'm working towards a more sound opening repertoire, and I'm doing tactical puzzles regularly. I think tactics might still be my biggest weakness, but not in the way that they used to be. In slow games, I don't make obvious tactical blunders any more, but I do need to work on tactically calculating whether or not my long term attacks are a good idea. And I still blunder tactically in most blitz games. My next biggest weakness right now is probably that I don't know what to do in middle games (and some openings) where I have no obvious attack. Again, Silman's books are probably my next big priority after all the endgame study.

--Fromper

[bjphillips]

Hi Fromper,
From what I've been able to gather checking rating progression of various improving players most of them play a significant number of games each year. Your stated goal is an improvement of about 250 points. I think it would be a safe bet to say that you should play at least 100 rated games if you want a good chance to achieve your goal. One of the things lost in the debate about Michael De La Maza is that he played a lot of rated games in the short time he was active. I know one player up here in Canada who achieved a 300 point gain in one year and he played just over 100 games to do that.
So, how much playing do think is necessary and how does it fit into your overall plan?
There is a second question here. Are you trying to increase your rating or are you trying to improve? These are not necessarily the same thing...

Brian

[Fromper]

I'm definitely trying to improve, and just using rating as yardstick in measuring that improvement. I'm not as concerned with hitting 1700 by the end of the year as with seeing noticeable improvement in my win/loss ratio, especially against the guys in the 1400-1700 range that I play regularly. If my skill improves, my rating will catch up eventually. Besides, that 1700 number is pretty arbitrary. I just set that goal to keep myself motivated over the long term, not because hitting artificial goals is really that important to me. Though now that I think about it, 1700 happens to be exactly 365 rating points above my rating at the end of 2007 (1335). So maybe I should make my goal 1701 by the end of 2008, since it's a leap year.

As for number of games, I was about to say that I doubt I'll get anywhere near 100 USCF rated games in a year, but then I actually did the math. I played 43 slow USCF rated games in the second half of 2007, and I've already played 6 more since 2008 started.

At the club I attend most Saturdays, I either play 1 game at G/120 or 2 games at G/75 every week. So figure 15-20 Saturdays of playing 1 game, 15-20 Saturdays of playing 2 games, and 15-20 Saturdays of not showing up, and I'll probably play around 45-60 games per year at that club, assuming it doesn't shut down (which could happen). On top of that, I know of 8 major annual tournaments in southern or central Florida that I usually try to attend, which I believe add up to another 42 games. So although I'm likely to miss an event or two somewhere along the way, I should actually play 80-100 slow USCF rated games this year, plus the possibility of making a major trip to an out of state tournament or the possibility of other minor tourneys popping up locally that I could play in.

I also regularly play both the Team League and Online Chess League on FICS, which provide a lot more slow games that are good practice. And then there's blitz games, both on the internet and occasionally at the local club, which aren't the same, but they still provide some level of practice.

So as long as I keep playing that much, reviewing my games, doing tactical puzzles, and also doing some other form of study beyond just playing and tactics, I think I'm on track for some solid improvement.

--Fromper

[Crash]

Originally Posted by Fromper

Ok, time to retire the old thread of "My improvement goals and plan" and start a new one for the new year.

As mentioned elsewhere, I just won the U1400 section of a major tournament this past weekend with wins in all 5 games, so my USCF rating should increase from 1335 to roughly 1457, according to the ratings estimator on the USCF web page. I'm thinking that a good goal for this year will be 1700 by the end of 2008. That's tough enough that I'll have to really work for it, but it's not so hard that it's outside the realm of possibility.

Congratulations! I'm glad you didn't pack it in when you had that string of discouraging results. It is a good lesson for others too. It seems like nothing is working and you keep working at it and then something just clicks into place and BOOM!!! its like you can do no wrong.

My main study right now is Pandolfini's Endgame Course, which I photocopied, put on flash cards, and I'm going through it over and over to really learn the whole thing. I'm also working through Reinfeld's 1001 Sacrifices and Combinations. I'm also trying to play every day on FICS, even if it's just a quick blitz game, and review my games afterwards.

I'm a little stuck for an opening repertoire right now. I was playing the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit as white, to learn how to attack by playing a classical attacking gambit. But I have yet to win a game in a USCF tournament with it. This last tournament, my opponents managed to avoid the gambit altogether, transposing to a Pirc, a Caro-Kann, and an oddball Nimzo-Indian-ish type setup in my 3 games as white. I want to play tactical games, but I don't want to only play the BDG, especially since I haven't been winning with it much.

So I'm thinking of switching back to 1. e4 at least part of the time, since I like most of those openings, but I don't know how to handle the Sicilian. I was playing the Smith-Morra Gambit, but I'm not that great with it. And I'm kind of scared of playing most other Sicilian lines, because I know how much study it requires to play them correctly. Honestly, I'm thinking of just saying "What the heck" and diving head first into the Open Sicilian in internet practice games, and just learn as I go. I might even try it as black, just to learn more about how to play against it. After all, that's how I learned the French.

As for black, I do well in the opening with the French, but the middle games often end up less tactical than I'd like, and I sometimes have a hard time converting a slight advantage into a win. So I'm thinking of trying something more open and tactical. I've been practicing meeting 1. e4 with e5 in internet games, though I've stuck with the French in tournaments. But after writing that last paragraph, now I'm seriously considering trying out the Sicilian as black, at least in practice games. Any suggestions for which line would be the best to try for when starting out using the Sicilian?

I used to like the Sveshnikov but I don't even want to know where theory has gone in this line since I used to enjoy playing it as either white or black some 30 years ago.

I also liked the Taimanov/Paulsen lines but I only played it a few times and usually against weaker players. I am looking at adding it to my repetoire once I feel comfortable playing again. I have played 1... e5 in response to 1.e4 for the longest time with very good results. In fact, I think my winning percentage with black is higher than my winning percentage with white largely because of this.

Against 1. d4, I keep coming back to the Englund Gambit ( 1. d4 e5). It's blatantly unsound, but I just keep winning with it. I've looked at other responses to 1. d4, just because I play the same people a lot in tournaments and I don't want them to be too prepared for me. But I keep coming back to the Englund, because I just keep winning with it.

Don't get too attached. Once you start improving you are going to run into opponents who won't have too much trouble beating unsound openings over the board without really knowing the refutation beforehand.

All in all, I'm experimenting a lot more with various openings than I used to. For a while, I was scared to play an opening that I didn't study first to get comfortable with it. But since I'm playing more blitz games online, I'm getting more opportunities to get used to openings the hard way, instead of just studying them to learn them. And I'm practicing other phases of the game at the same time, so I think that's the best way to go. I'm sure with all this experimentation, I'll eventually find more openings I like, and those will be the ones I'll play more often in tournaments.

--Fromper

Quick addendum: The results of this last tournament have been posted to the USCF site, and most of my opponents did well, so I gained more rating points than predicted. My new rating is 1468, which is 45 points higher than my previous high.

So I'm shooting for 1700 by the end of 2008, but I think 1500 in the next 2-3 months would be a reasonable goal if I could find enough USCF rated games. We're trying to get a team together for the US Amateur Team South in February, but other than that, the next major tournament around here isn't until the end of April. The club where I play one or two games on most Saturdays just lost its location, so we may stop meeting if we can't get another place soon. It'll be hard to gain rating points if I only play in one tournament in the next 4 months.

--Fromper

Good luck with your goals!

Crash

[Fromper]

I had a very good evening of study and practice last night. I did 15 tactical puzzles, 15 endgame puzzles, and I played a fairly slow game on FICS. It was a game where I experimented with getting outside my comfort zone in the opening by answering e4 with e5 instead of my usual French. My opponent played the Vienna, and I played into one of the sharpest lines, which my opponent and I both played badly. I ended up a piece ahead on tactics, and I definitely learned something about that opening. Unfortunately, I completely blew the endgame. I thought that if I gave the extra piece back in order to trade off the queens, I'd have a won endgame with pawns only. I think my evaluation of the endgame at that point was wrong, so I should have drawn, but in my attempt to force a win, I ended up blowing it and losing. It was a good learning game for me.

--Fromper

I seem to be on a roll this week in my study. I did about a dozen tactical puzzles today, and I spent probably close to two hours total on endgame study. Check out the "Pawns" and "Endgame Practice" threads for details.

I didn't actually play a game today, but I did schedule my first TeamLeague game of the new tournament on FICS, so I'll have a long game tomorrow evening. I've got white against a guy who plays the Sicilian against 1. e4 and Nf6 against 1. d4. I think I'll try the Colle against him instead of my old Blackmar-Diemer Gambit or Smith-Morra Gambit. This will be a good time to start playing the Colle regularly, I think.

So that's two days in a row of getting plenty of good Chess time, and I'll have the long game tomorrow to make it three. This is what happens when I actually do all the big errands over the weekend that I said I would - I actually have my evenings free during the week!

--Fromper

Been a few days since I've posted to this thread. I've done some study - continuing to do puzzles. I won my online league game on Wed night.

I drew my USCF tournament game yesterday against an unrated opponent playing his first tournament. I should have won that one, too, but I blundered in a won endgame. I had a rook and four pawns against a rook and two pawns. I just had to walk my connected passed pawns up the board and win, but I moved my rook to go after his pawns (which weren't going anywhere, since they were blocked by mine), and that allowed his rook to attack my good pawns. I keep thinking I'm getting better at endgames, and then I blow it with junk like this. I really need to study that whole game in detail to see what I can learn. It was an odd game from start to finish, mostly because he didn't know how to handle the opening, so I had to improvise, which I think I did fairly well.

On the up side, at least the new guy isn't going to lose all of his games in his first tournament and be so intimidated that he never comes back. We've had a few of those at the club. And as I said, I need to study the game. I think I can learn quite a bit from this one.

--Fromper

[Ronaldinho]

Post the endgame position.

Rook endgames are hard. You'll find that most practical endgame books spend far more time on rook endings than on anything. Not only are they the most common endings, but some of the most complicated.

In a rook ending, you can have two pawns against no pawns and it can still be a draw.

Post the position. It'll be educational.